Quote

We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.

Colson Whitehead

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Colson Whitehead
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 1
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead
Monsters
Anyway
Make
Never
People

More quotes by Colson Whitehead

Image
It is failure that guides evolution perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.
Colson Whitehead
Image
The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone.
Colson Whitehead
Image
In terms of why everything is different, each book is different than the one before because I'm so bored of what I just finished I want to work on something different. The next book becomes an antidote to what I did before.
Colson Whitehead
Image
Memory is the most malicious cutter of all, preserving, recasting, panning in slow motion across the awful bits so that we retain every detail.
Colson Whitehead
Image
A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.
Colson Whitehead
Image
I'm trying to keep it fresh for me. I'm just trying to not bore myself. And if I can do a detective novel, and if I can do a horror novel, then why do it again? To keep the work challenging I have to keep moving.
Colson Whitehead
Image
I write books and either people read them or they don't read them. The rise of Facebook or e-books doesn't change the difficulty level of writing sentences and thinking up new ideas.
Colson Whitehead
Image
Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.
Colson Whitehead
Image
I can't blame modern technology for my predilection for distraction, not after all the hours I've spent watching lost balloons disappear into the clouds. I did it before the Internet, and I'll do it after the apocalypse, assuming we still have helium and weak-gripped children.
Colson Whitehead
Image
There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to be as near to hell as they can.
Colson Whitehead
Image
In other words, fiction is payback for those who have wronged you.
Colson Whitehead
Image
I always have a few ideas that are percolating, and then after I've finished a book and it's a year later, and things are sort of festering and things are disgusting in my house and I have to get back to work, whatever project I keep thinking about is the one I end up working on. Sort of a very simple process of elimination.
Colson Whitehead
Image
As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless.
Colson Whitehead
Image
You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.
Colson Whitehead
Image
His legs remembered the correct position for squatting down with toys. He played. He fit the round male studs into the round female grooves. He got some thinking done as he hunkered down on his fallen-sleep legs.
Colson Whitehead
Image
Don’t go searching for a subject, let your subject find you. You can’t rush inspiration. … Once your subject finds you, it’s like falling in love. It will be your constant companion. Shadowing you, peeping in your windows, calling you at all hours to leave messages like, Only you understand me.
Colson Whitehead
Image
I think being a writer was a crappy job when you just had typewriters. It was crappy when we just had ink and paper. And it's sort of crappy now. It's always just you and the page. That doesn't change.
Colson Whitehead
Image
Talking about New York is a way of talking about the world.
Colson Whitehead
Image
Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel.
Colson Whitehead
Image
I think the world's big enough for all kinds of zombies. You can have yours and I can have mine. I think by going with slow zombies I maybe have been asserting my own kind of zombie snobbery, but I don't begrudge the youngsters their tackling, running, jumping zombies.
Colson Whitehead